What plant is this?

lakesidejakeFebruary 10, 2010

Hi, first time posting here, but have learned so much from reading this forum. My question is: what is the plant pictured below? I see it all over in San Diego and I would love to plant it in my yard. Seems like it doesn't need much water and it forms a nice dense ground cover and it has pretty yellow flowers right now. I see it in the median of the 52 freeway and all over on the grounds of UCSD. Bottom line is I want it! :)

My neighbors had a huge stand of a tree size acacia and I certainly notice the difference now that they have been removed. We still have plenty of huge forest trees (evergreens--monterey pine, redwood, sitka spruce, hemlocks) but I don't get as sick as I did in the past.

I'd suggest you consider whether you really have the room for Acacia redolens, as it wants to get 12 feet across in fairly short time, and would need constant pruning to keep it smaller. The drought tolerance, fast spread on this and thick weed suppressing cover is the reason why it is so useful for highway landscaping, but unless you have a large slope to cover, it is not as useful for small gardens. I haven't seen this one naturalize outside of plantings where it is used along HWY 80 in Contra Coasta and Solano Counties, so I don't think it is as potentially weedy as some of the tree growing species. I suspect it does need some summer irrigation to self sow and survive, but I don't have any direct experience with the species to say for sure.